Benjamin Grimm (Earth-21399)
History Early Life Benjamin Jacob Grimm was born in 1942 to a Jewish family in Brooklyn. During his adolescence, Ben initially fell in with a group of delinquents called the Yancy Street Boys, who mostly committed acts of petty vandalism, shoplifting and harrassment. However, after the gang's leader suggested a full-fledged home burglary so that he could purchase a stash of alcohol with the money, Ben realized the error of his ways and left the gang. During high school, Ben joined the football team as a linebacker and became the star player, with his peers nicknaming him “the Grimm Reaper”. College Ben applied for college on a football scholarship, where he was roommates with child prodigy Reed Richards and foreign exchange student Viktor Domashev. Though Viktor didn't care for either of them, Ben and Reed became fast, fierce friends. It was during college that Reed developed his ideas on manned space flight, and Ben half-jokingly promised to fly the prototype ship, should Reed ever get one working. Pilot Career Ben's childhood dream was to become a pilot – to this end, he joined the Air Force after college and became one of their top test flyers. When he was given the opportunity to transfer to NASA, Ben took it without hesitation, and was accepted for astronaut training. Once he arrived at NASA headquarters, Ben was surprised to find his old high school friend, Reed Richards, working there and having managed to build a manned spacecraft as part of the Apollo Moon shuttle project. Reed held Ben to his promise from college, and Ben became instrumental in designing and building various modifications to the shuttle frame of the Apollo 13 craft. During the maiden flight of Apollo 13, Reed, Ben and fellow crew member Bentley Whitman landed in the Fra Mauro Highlands on the Moon. With Whitman in the command module, Reed and Ben went out to dig for materials to conduct experiments with, only to dig up a strange, glowing blue cubical artifact, which they transported back home in a containment unit. Birth of the Fantastic Four Back on Earth, the Cube was moved in secret to the Baxter Institute, a secret government research center. Despite his best efforts, Reed and the other scientists at the Institute had trouble figuring out the Cube's true nature, so Reed called upon Viktor Domashev to help. Viktor accepted the offer only so that he could prove his superior intellect. Reed and Viktor made significant headway in understanding the Cube, discovering it was a conduit for "some unknown form of radioactive energy". However, Viktor secretly began developing a machine to harness the Cube's power in the hopes of figuring out where his mother had gone and potentially freeing her, but his calculations were off by two crucial decimal points and the experiment quickly got out of control. Reed, Viktor and a number of nearby bystanders – including Ben, Susan Storm and her younger brother, Johnathon – were zapped by the rampant energy unleashed by the Cube. Reed, Ben, Susan and Johnny were transported outside the facility, while Viktor was grazed in the head, leaving a single, glowing scar. Ben and his compatriots woke up in the middle of a field in Nevada, and discovered that the Cube's radiation had altered their bodies - Ben was transformed into a large, rocklike creature with superhuman strength and durability. Before any of them could come to grips with their newfound abilities, they were picked up by military officials under the command of General Walter Allan and placed under quarantine. Trivia * Ben's catchphrase, "It's clobberin' time", originated from his days in the Yancy Street gang, where the gangsters used to say this before beating up weaker kids. After leaving the gang, Ben reappropriated the phrase as his catchphrase before beginning a football game. Since joining the Fantastic Four, Ben started using the phrase in its original context, but only against people who he felt truly deserved a clobberin'. Category:Heroes Category:Created by N0bodii Category:Versions of Thing Category:Earth-21399 Category:Heroes of Earth-21399